From The Peopling of New York City
Research Proposal
It is early afternoon; I navigate the sun soaked cobblestone of Little West Twelfth Street. It is desolate by day, all vacant bars and abandoned meat packing plants. The breeze carries the scent of the salty Hudson to my nose where it swirls with the lingering smell of slaughter and I am nauseated. My stomach seems to be aware of a history my brain has yet to learn.
I begin my research broadly, a web search. To my pleasant surprise, Little West 12th Street has its own Wikipedia page .I quickly become aware that my street is heavily associated with Gansevoort Market, which has a sorted history of its own. By 1900, the market was home to 250 slaughterhouse and packing plants. Some still stand. (Wikipedia)
Weichsel Beef Co. sits uncomfortably out of place at the streets end with only the breeze from the traffic of the Westside highway to keep it company. Three large trucks parked outside and painted with the company’s emblem indicate that the sad looking building is still in business. Hoping to attach this desolate street to some kind of human lineage, I do an Ancestry.com search for Weichsel’s born in New York. My most promising result is a certain Sigmund Weichsel born in the Bronx in 1907. His brief obituary alludes to his role in the company and mentions that they will be contributing to his funerary services. I am unable to find any actual residents of Little West 12th Street, leading me to believe it has been a sparsely populated industrial area for some time.
Not only is this streets history particularly ironic, but its secrets are also versatile. On one hand it communicates an economic history, from neglected Industrial Street to cobblestone runway for the city’s wealthiest party-goers; it speaks for a change in priority. On the other hand, Little West 12th Street tells an invaluable social narrative about New York’s Gay Subculture.
In order to adequately understand Little West 12th Street’s curious reinvention into a supremely chic nightlife strip, it is important not to neglect it’s more recent history. In the 1980’s the street became a center for drug dealing and prostitution due to its ideal place in the then-neglected meat packing district. This secret street provided refuge for transsexuals; the uninhabited industrialized district became the center of the city’s budding gay subculture, with over a dozen sex clubs in Gansevoort Market and several operating on Little West 12th Street alone. This allure withered in the height of AIDS preventionism and the street was plunged back into its former desolation.
The streets most current transformation speaks for yet another narrative, one of capital expansion. “The peopling of New York is largely a function of capitalist expansion,” (class notes). Little West 12th streets development required two important components: people willing to take capitalist risks and economic incentives. Newly graduated Business major, Eugene Remm saw potential in the charming cobblestone and large, abandoned spaces, converting two side by side packing plants into STK, an upscale Steakhouse and its club counterpart, Tenjune. Remm now spearheads the newly successful company EMM Group and is working of many other “rags to riches” enterprises. However, it is important to keep in mind that this kind of success story never comes without its consequences. “The Meatpacking District has replaced Chelsea as the epicenter of the Manhattan party scene - and home to all the woes that follow. The venerable neighborhood hosts an assortment of less savory sorts each weekend: Drunks. Cokeheads. Dealers.” (Carroll).
By examining this street’s course to trendy splendor, we learn something important about the unending faculty for resilience present only in New York City. As former mayor Phillip Hone once said, “Overturn, overturn, overturn! is the maxim of New York,” (Reitano, 1). The obsolete has the possibility of becoming cutting edge, and the oppressed, the opportunity to rise up as equals. “New York,” said Hone exemplified, “the spirit of pulling down and building up,” (Reitano, 1).
